


For A Little While

by Evilawyer



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-07
Updated: 2008-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:23:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilawyer/pseuds/Evilawyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's going to do it anyway because it'll make him feel better for a little while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For A Little While

**Author's Note:**

> Time Frame: Immediately post-Last of the Time Lords.
> 
> Betaed by x-los.

The Doctor knows he shouldn't do this. It's wrong and it's dangerous and it won't make him feel any better in the long run. He should have burned the Master's paradox machine blueprints along with the Master's body instead of jealously hoarding them like two cans of tuna in a famine-ravaged land. He didn't. And he won't. And he doesn't care that it's wrong or dangerous or that it won't make him feel better for long. He's going to do it anyway because it'll make him feel better for a little while.

 

He won't use his TARDIS, though. She's been through too much and he loves her too much to do that to her, even though she's let him know she'd do it for him. She's all he has left. She's his only home now. The stars feel too cold and distant to be home anymore and the only real home he's ever known is dead and burned.

 

He'd been a dad once. More than once. He remembers telling Rose that and how shocked, how betrayed she'd looked. What a stupid little girl she'd been about that. He didn't say it then, didn't even think it then, but he thinks it now. He thinks it now even though he knows she's intelligent and brave and lovely. Stupid, the way all humans are stupid. Stupid like the arrogant, short-sighted, self-obsessed and ungenerous creatures that they are. Stupid in their unshakable belief that they shape their world instead of destroying it, that they control everything they touch, that they understand everything, that they _matter_.

 

When you can feel the spin of a planet on its axis, when you can see the turn of time, when you can watch planets die and ancient civilizations burn, maybe then you can understand just a little bit of everything. But you're never in control and you never _matter_. He understands that now, even though he doesn't like it and would rather not know it and will never admit to it to anyone --- sometimes not even himself.

 

But anyway, he'd been a dad once. He remembers how accomplished he'd felt when his children came into their own. He remembers how loved he'd felt when his grandchildren hugged him. He remembers how proud he'd felt when fate in the shape of an immortality-seeking megalomaniac --- Borusa, that time; how unexpected _that_ had been --- brought his last grandchild back to him and he'd seen that she had grown into the fine, brave woman he'd known she could be.

 

He knows now that he'd been lucky on that one. Susan could have just as easily grown into a dead young girl minutes after he'd locked her out of the TARDIS and just _left_ her. He'd thought that she was ready to face life on her own, but that didn't mean she was. He'd been a child himself then. He hadn't yet learned that you can live for a millennium and still not be ready to face the things that life could throw at you. He knows it now, just like he knows that locking Susan out of the TARDIS and out of his life the way he did couldn't have made her or her life better.

 

He doesn't often think about Susan. When he does, he remembers why he doesn't.

 

But as much as he had loved the feel of his children's and grandchildren's arms --- Susan's arms --- around him, the love of offspring and issue isn't what he's after now. He's known that love, and knowing it once was enough. No matter how young and desirable this body is to young human females, he's too old to want that kind of love again. That love requires a capacity for selfless devotion to another person that he doesn't have anymore. In his more honest moments of self-awareness, he has to concede that he probably never did.

 

He's known the love that's actually nothing more than quiet affection, the kind of love that shows itself in just sitting and talking with someone. He'd known that love with his wife and he'd been awful at it in the end. Knowing that kind of love once was enough, as well.

 

He's known the love that's a rush of pure excitement, that's a burning ache brought on by _wanting_ someone. He's known the giddiness and bouncy exuberance that comes along with wanting and having someone for more than just one night. And he's known what it feels like to feel that love directed back at him tenfold. He's known the fear that gripped him when he'd felt that tenfold love clutch at him, grab at him, smother him and hold him back even as it promised to roam the universe forever with him. He's known the fight-or-flight response that flooded him when that tenfold love demanded his presence and refused to let him be alone with himself.

 

He's been alone with himself for a good long while now. He can't understand now how he could have ever thought that being alone with himself could be a good thing.

 

The Master wasn't just a mechanic. He was a brilliant mechanic. He'd used the TARDIS as a tool to indefinitely sustain the Toclafane paradox, but his blueprints showed that building a machine that could temporarily sustain a paradox was feasible even without a living TARDIS to hold it in place. The Master had seen it as a fun “do-it-yourself” project; the Doctor sees it as a complicated mess that could easily bring on Armageddon. Still, all the Doctor has to do is follow the blueprints to the “t”, avoid screwing up and he'll have a fully function paradox machine to take him wherever and whenever that exciting and frightening love is.

 

****

He steps away from the paradox machine, feeling a little nauseous as he adjusts to when he shouldn't be. He's in a private club somewhere in England and the distinguished looking gentleman seated in an armchair at the other end of the main room, the one who's enjoying his brandy and cigar, is the Master. Not very tall, especially compared to his own current body. He remembers being a lot taller than this Master the first time around, too. Thinning, graying hair, but what there is of it is still luxuriant. Goatee and mustache, also graying but nicely filled in. Pale --- too many English winters spent chasing the Doctor's third body, maybe --- but somehow darkly swarthy. Cufflinks on this one, too. Funny. He'd never noticed that before.

 

But the eyes. Brown eyes that had given him long, languorous looks, that silently shouted out how much they wanted to trust him, to believe him and everything he said no matter how often they betrayed each other. Eyes that looked at him in a way that proved that the Master's tenfold love had never died and never faded away but had twisted into something else, something evil and noxious, when it had been ignored and shoved aside and left once too often. Eyes he remembers. Eyes he knows now he'll never forget.

 

The Doctor walks up to the Master and looks at him through the smoke of the Master's cigar. He takes the Master's brandy glass from the little table beside the Master's chair and drains it.

 

The Master, irritated and annoyed at such rudeness, looks up at the Doctor. “Can I help you, young...,” the Master begins sarcastically and stops when he looks, really looks, at the Doctor. The Doctor feels the lurch in his belly, the catch in his breath, the acceleration of his hearts before the Master says, “Well, well, Doctor. It seems you've become even more the rebellious renegade with age. I'm not currently engaged in any of my usual enterprises, so there's no need for you to hunt me down to try and stop me. Is there some particularly compelling reason you've crossed your own time line and risked catastrophe on a galactic scale to be here?

 

“You. You're the reason, Master.” It's covered up by a number of little actions from removing the empty brandy glass from the Doctor's hand to twirling his cigar between his thumb and forefinger to clearing his throat, but the Doctor still sees the full body shiver that this Master almost but doesn't quite suppress as the Doctor says his name. It had always been there. There to be seen, there to be acknowledged if his third body had only let go of his fear of being smothered and allowed himself to see it. But his third body hadn't been as lonely for another Time Lord's touch – for the Master's touch --- as he was. His third body was imprisoned by the Time Lords, and he'd hated the feeling of being penned by them almost as much as his first body had hated the feeling of being trapped by the young man who became the Master. Time made you wiser. Sadder. Bolder.

 

He squats down, forearms resting on his thighs, so that he's almost face-to-face with the Master. “You like it when I use your name. I know you do. Go ahead and show it, Master. I'd like to see.”

 

From the assessing look the Master levels at him, the Doctor can tell that the Master is trying to figure out what the Doctor's game is. Just as he's about to tell the Master that it's no game, the Master says, “What is it that you want, Doctor? And don't tell me it's to rule the universe with me or to escape the Time Lords' punishment. You've already turned down the former. As for the latter, well ... let's just say that I'm a bit leery of your claims to hate bondage. Your recent double-bluff of the Axons hinged on an ultimately false professed desire to shake off the High Council's yoke, after all.” The Master settles back in his chair and puffs at his cigar.

 

The Doctor drops his knees to the floor and sits back on his calves. There's just enough physical distance between him and the Master to preserve the concept of personal space. “It's very simple, Master. I'm surprised you haven't guessed, really.”

 

The Master leans forward in his chair. “Indulge me.”

 

“I want you.”

 

The Master says nothing, just sits back in his chair again and continues to puff on his cigar. Not all that surprising, really. No matter what's below the surface, what's simmering in those eyes, this Master hates him enough to try to choke the life out of him. Hadn't they all? But that didn't matter anymore.

 

“You don't believe me,” the Doctor announces as he rubs the corner of his eye with his fingertip. “Yeah, well, not a big surprise, that. I suppose some of the things I did in this time line could have left you with the opposite impression.” The Doctor draws himself up to kneel in front of the Master. He lays his hands on the ends of the arms of the Master's chair. “I do, though. Want you.” He looks at the Master, wide-eyed and earnest, trying to convey his sincerity with more than just words. “I want your mind, your body. I want to be in you.” He leans forward until his hip rests lightly against the side of the Master's knee. He lifts the Master's right hand from where it rests on the arm of the chair, plucks the cigar from between the Master's fingers and places it in the ashtray on the side table, and presses the fingers of the Master's hand against his left temple. “Go ahead. See for yourself. I'm telling you the truth. I want you. Believe it.”

 

The Master's eyes go impossibly darker, and the Doctor remembers a time when he refused to let this Master touch him for fear that he'd establish unwanted contact. Then he feels the Master's tentative probing into the surface of his mind. He feels the Master testing the parameters of his loneliness, checking to see how deep it runs, how long it's existed, all the while avoiding any deep plunges into the Doctor's mind. When the Master comes up to the edges of the Doctor's memories of the Time War, he stops short. He pulls his hand away from the Doctor's temple and his mind out of the Doctor's with equal abruptness.

 

The Doctor tries to ignore the bereft feeling he's left with and asks, “You've seen?”

 

The Master nods. “Enough, yes.”

 

“You believe me?”

 

“I believe you're lonely and that you want your loneliness to stop, if only for a little while.”

 

The Doctor sighs. He's suddenly so tired. Tired of being alone, of being rejected, of having to reject others, of never having a moment's respite. “It's more than just that.”

 

The Master looks at him for a moment as if he's deciding what to make of what the Doctor's just said. Then he says “Strangely enough, Doctor, right now I find that I don't especially care whether it is or isn't.” He reaches down to the ashtray on the table and stubs his cigar out. Standing up, he asks, “You have some place in mind?”

 

“Yes,” the Doctor says, but he actually doesn't. The Doctor is ready to pull this Master to him and kiss him in the middle of this main room of a private club somewhere in England, to lay him down on a sofa or over the back of an armchair or on the floor in front of the fireplace --- whatever's available --- rip off his clothes and cover his body with kisses before sinking into him. He never did that with the Master of his time line. He'd thought it would happen, just before the end; he'd thought it with such conviction that it had actually flashed in his mind's eye as the Master stood before him, handcuffed and waiting to hear his fate. He never did that with this Master, either. He's going to rectify that omission right now while he still can.

 

The Master glances down at the Doctor's burgeoning erection, then looks back up into his eyes. “Then perhaps we should go now, before your ... state ... attracts attention.”

 

The Doctor looks down, then back at the Master. “I shouldn't worry about that, Master,” he says, mischief in his eyes and voice. “If anyone notices, I'll just tell them that you did it. You are evil, after all. Some things never change.”

 

The Master laughs. “I'm pleased to hear it.”

 

***

 

Outside, it's raining. The Master has an umbrella. The Doctor doesn't, so he huddles up to the Master and gets under the umbrella with him. The Master looks pained, but he doesn't protest until the Doctor reaches for his hand and holds on to it.

 

“Doctor, this is 1971. It's just possible that holding hands with another man in public can still get you arrested here. Even if it isn't,” the Master continues as he looks around at the bustling crowd around them on the wet sidewalk, “I'm sure it's the kind of thing these humans all around us would find objectionable.”

 

“Nah. Arrested? Really? Isn't that a bit barbaric?” The Doctor is astounded. As much as he loves Earth, there are some things about the place he can't bring himself to understand. “Well, we'll just explain that we're two dear old friends who are sharing an umbrella because I was incredibly forgetful and didn't bring mine with me today.”

 

The Master stops walking and turns to the Doctor, pulling away from him so that the Doctor gets wet. “Friends,” the Master repeats like he's never heard the word before.

 

“Why not? It'll save us a night in jail or a mugging. Well, hopefully.” The Doctor puts his arm through the Master's, turns him to face straight ahead and starts them walking again. “And it's not like it's a lie.” He lowers his voice; what he has to say is only for the Master's ears. “We were friends once. More than friends. We should be able to remember that sometimes.” He looks at the Master to gauge his reaction, but the Master keeps looking straight ahead.

 

***

 

They find a place that they both agree on. The Doctor opens the room door and walks right in. The Master, however, hesitates at the threshold. His eyes move around the room in a way that telegraphs the fact that, despite everything the Doctor's said and done so far, the Master doesn't trust the situation or the Doctor. The Doctor tries not to feel sad about that.

 

“Come in, Master,” the Doctor says softly. “Please.”

 

The Master straightens his spine and walks in.

 

The room isn't fancy, but it's big and clean and warm. It will do. They're not there to admire the decor, after all. And the bed, the Doctor happily notes as he sits down on it and bounces a few times, is extremely comfortable.

 

“This is lovely. Come over here and try it, Master.” The Doctor pats the spot beside him on the bed. The Master, who hasn't stopped moving around aimlessly while running his fingers over furniture and windowsills since he walked in the door, ignores the invitation. He sits down in a chair at the table that's on the opposite side of the room from the bed.

 

“So, Doctor,” the Master says as he puts his folded umbrella on the table, “perhaps now you'd tell me what this is all about.”

 

The Doctor feels tired again, but he ignores it. “I told you, Master. I thought you believed me.”

 

“I believe that you want company, yes. But I still can't figure out why you claim to want my company .”

 

The Doctor can think of nothing more convincing than the truth. “Because I do.”

 

The look on the Master's face clearly shows he's not persuaded. “That you say you do doesn't abate my skepticism, Doctor.”

 

The Doctor scoots down to sit at the foot of the bed so that he's as close to the Master as he can be without getting off the bed. He rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward toward the Master. “I want you because you're the one I want to be with. You're the only one.” Touching the tip of his tongue to his upper lip, the Doctor tries to think of better words. He can't think of any, at least not any that the Master might believe. “I can't explain why I want you any better than that.”

 

“Since that circuitous logic explains absolutely nothing, perhaps you could tell me why you think I'm the only one you can be with this way. Surely you could find a human companion who would be willing to indulge your hitherto infrequent sexual urges. This body you're wearing now is quite pleasing to the eye, if a bit on the thin side. I imagine you could attract any number of adequate bed partners.”

 

“I imagine I could, too, but this isn't about adequate bed partners. It's not about just sex. And it isn't the same with humans. You know that from your little dalliance with Queen Galliea, I'm sure. And then there's your wife...”

 

“My what?!” The Master is clearly caught off guard.

 

The Doctor doesn't remember ever having seen this Master's smooth sophistication slip. It's delicious.

 

The Doctor had known he had no right to feel betrayed when he'd seen the Master kiss Lucy on television with the whole world watching. He'd known he had no right to feel jealous when the Master would do something as simple, as sexless as touch Lucy's hand in his presence. It wasn't his place to feel those things. It hadn't been his place to feel those things for centuries upon centuries. He'd felt them anyway.

 

Maybe it wasn't this Master that taunted him with a human wife, but the Doctor wants him to pay for it a little anyway since the Master who did can't. This Master is aghast at the thought of taking a human wife --- which, to be fair, his own Master would have been if he'd been in his right mind --- and the Doctor can't resist rubbing it in just a little.

 

“You marry a human in the future. I think it was a church wedding and everything,” he explains with more venom than he likes to hear in his own voice. “Can't think why. She was pretty enough, I suppose, but she hardly had a towering intellect. Must have made for some very boring evenings once the fucking was finished. I'd always credited you with being a bit more discerning, but there you are, in the future, with a human wife. You marry a human.”

 

“That's lunacy,” the Master dismisses.

 

“Very probably, but you do.” The venom is still there, joined now by bitterness. The Doctor hopes the Master doesn't notice.

 

“Is that jealously I hear in your voice, Doctor? I suppose I should be touched that you come to care what I do in future. But we were talking about you. If you don't find humans sufficiently satisfying, why not a member of some other species? The Forest of Cheem are a delightful and refreshingly intelligent people. Why not seek out one of them for sexual relations? Or perhaps even another Time Lord. You should be able to find a least one Time Lord, stodgy and frigid though they may be, to couple with. Perhaps another renegade. Surely, there must be someone somewhere who's willing to have sex with you.”

 

The Doctor reminds himself that this Master didn't look deep enough into his mind to see what the Time War wrought, that this Master doesn't know there are no other Time Lords, that he isn't being intentionally hurtful this time. The Doctor then realizes something he hadn't realized before. This Master is scared. A little, anyway. He's not scared of the physical realities of having sex with the Doctor. He's scared of the emotional pain that trusting the Doctor --- even just for sex --- can bring. The Doctor can't deny that the Master is intimately familiar with that pain, but the Doctor doesn't have time to skirt around it or the Master's fear of it. He sits up straight before he explains, “I don't want to have sex with someone. I want to make love with you.”

 

The Master slaps his palms lightly on the table top and chuckles harshly. “Oh, so it's tenderness you're after. I've always found that knowledge gained through experience is the truest knowledge. Since you left Gallifrey in search of new experiences, you can probably understand what I mean. I know you. Maybe you're different now with other partners, but I know that, when it came from me, you preferred rough sex to gentle lovemaking ninety-nine times out of every hundred. Excuse me, then, for saying so if it offends you, but the thought of you wanting tenderness from me is rather amusing.”

 

The Doctor rises from the bed and moves to stand in front of the Master. “I know you, too, Master. I've known you for longer than you've known me and I think that maybe, just maybe, tenderness is something you wish I'd have always let you give.” Before the Master can respond, the Doctor takes the Master's head in his hands and enters the Master's mind. There's no resistance, not at first, and the Doctor can clearly feel the swirling cloud of thoughts and emotions that form the Master's view of him. There's anger. There's disappointment and a sense of loss, too. And there, just barely covered up by a layer of hate so thin it's nearly transparent in places, is the love that the Doctor came here for.

 

The Doctor feels the Master gathering strength to eject him from his mind. “You can give it to me now,” the Doctor says gently, his voice almost a whisper, as he withdraws before the Master pushes him out. “I'll accept it. I won't toss it away.”

 

The Master says nothing at first, just looks at the Doctor's hands where they now hang by his sides. Taking one of the Doctor's hands in his own, he brings it to his mouth and presses his lips to the back of it. “Well,” he says, running his lips over the Doctor's skin as he does, “perhaps just this once.”

 

The Master stands up. They undress, not helping each other even though the Doctor would very much like to uncover this Master's body bit by bit. Once they're both naked, the Doctor takes the Master's hand and moves backwards towards the bed. As he follows the Doctor, the Master looks at the Doctor with desire and something akin to amazement, like he can't believe the Doctor is here. It's like nothing the Doctor has ever seen on this Master's face. It's a look the Doctor likes.

 

Even before they lie down, this Master's hands stroke the Doctor's face, his neck, his shoulders. The sensation makes the Doctor remember how the Master of his time line had clamped his hand down on the Doctor's aged shoulder as they watched the Toclafane rain destruction down upon the Earth. That hand had been possessive, had been sure of its right to be possessive, as it clutched at him. The Doctor had felt the old fear that had nothing to do with decimation of a population and everything to do with being trapped and smothered, and he had shuddered in revulsion. His Master had felt that shudder. His Master had known what it meant. His Master had pulled his hand away like he'd been burned.

 

His Master had only touched him twice after that --- once to punch him and once to roughly pick him up and throw him into a chair. They'd happened minutes apart, but both times the Doctor had received distinct impressions from the Master's mind that the Master didn't want to feel the Doctor's disgust at his touch, would have rather not touched the Doctor at all since that disgust was sure to surface. Both times, the Master's touch --- even the punch --- had been quick and guarded, hesitant and reserved, carrying nothing of the Master himself, not even his possessiveness.

 

This Master's touch isn't hesitant, isn't reserved. Maybe it's because it's just this once, but he touches the Doctor with the same warmth and willingness to give more of himself than just possessiveness with which he'd once touched Theta. The Doctor recalls that Theta stopped letting himself feel that warmth and willingness when he decided that Koschei was just a little too clingy for his taste. The Doctor lets himself feel it now. He welcomes it. He wishes he always had.

 

This Master takes him in his mouth. This Master licks him and sucks him until he groans in pleasure and comes, then swallows when he's done. This Master crawls up his body and smiles at him before kissing him. When he shivers with the small aftershocks of his orgasm, this Master doesn't pull away like he's been burned.

 

But when the Doctor eases this Master to lie on his stomach, kisses his back between his shoulder blades and skims his fingers down his spine to linger teasingly at the cleft of his buttocks, this Master tenses. “No? We don't have to if you don't want,” the Doctor says while hoping the Master does want.

 

“Is it what you want?” The Master's voice is calm, but the Doctor feels his muscles tremble. The Doctor can't tell if the Master's tremors mean he's afraid of doing this, afraid that the Doctor will reject him after all, or simply excited at the prospect of giving himself in this way. Maybe, the Doctor thinks, it's a bit of all three.

 

The Doctor could say _no_ or _not really_ , or _it isn't necessary_ but they'd all be lies. To be here like this, to feel the Master under him, to be inside him ... He wants it. He needs it. And this Master is willing to give it to him. “Yes,” he breathes.

 

The Master's eyes fairly dance and shine as he responds, “Then we will.”

 

The Master's breathing gets faster and he moans a little as the Doctor kisses and caresses and prepares him. When the Doctor properly thrusts into him for the first time, he lets out a groan that sounds to the Doctor's ears exactly like the groan the Master of his time line let out as he struggled to stand after having been flung back in time one year. He'd wondered, looking at him in the split second before the gun shot rang out, what it was going to be like to coax that sound out of that Master, to hear that Master make that sound as he kissed and caressed and moved inside him. So many times since he's told himself it would have never happened, that a Master who had rather die than stay with him wouldn't have let it happen. But he's been unable to convince himself that every spark of love in his Master was so thoroughly dead that there was no chance he would have ever been with his Master like this, no chance that his Master would have ever given himself this way. Even now, when his Master is ash, he still wonders what it would have been like to draw that sound from his Master. Hearing this Master make it now, he knows it would have been a beautiful, glorious thing.

 

He feels himself getting close. He reaches under the Master and takes hold of his cock. He starts up a firm slide with his hand because he refuses to reach his release alone. This time the Master is coming with him.

 

He climaxes, crying out the Master's name in a way he can't remember ever doing when they were young. The Master shudders at the sound of his name leaving the Doctor's lips and comes a fraction of a second later, moaning the Doctor's name into the pillows.

 

When they've finished, the Doctor rolls over onto his back. He resists the urge to pull the Master to him. Koschei liked to snuggle after making love --- Theta used to complain that Koschei seemed to have as many arms as an octopus when he snuggled --- but, even though he hasn't shrunk away from the Doctor, the Doctor's not sure if this Master would like being held just now. When, after a moment, the Master shifts nearer to him and puts his ear on his chest, the Doctor allows himself the treat of wrapping one arm loosely around the Master. The beard's a little scratchy on his chest, but the Doctor finds he quite likes it.

 

The Master breaks the peaceful quiet. “You'll have to go soon.”

 

The Doctor closes his eyes. “Not yet.”

 

“No. Not yet, but soon,” the Master reiterates. “The time lines are starting to fray. Can't you feel it?”

 

The Doctor doesn't. “You always were more sensitive to fluctuations in the time lines than anyone else,” the Doctor says. His brow contracts as he ponders why the Master should be so different in so many ways. “I wonder why that is.”

 

“I'm not sure. It started when I was a child. At our induction, in fact. I looked into the Vortex and it chose me.”

 

The Doctor remembers his Master saying the same thing about the drums. He feels a chill run down his spine at the future echo. Then he feels the Master's hand tapping an all too familiar four-beat rhythm on his ribs. It's the beat he saw his Master tap into table tops, the beat his Master begged him to hear over and over again during the year that the Doctor reversed. The chill down his spine intensifies.

 

The Doctor fills his voice with a casualness he does not feel. “Do you hear that?”

 

The Master laughs as he lifts his head. “My dear Doctor. Are you experiencing auditory hallucinations in your old age? The Master looks down at the Doctor with amusement, but also concern.

 

“No. I'm talking about that tapping you're doing. Is that something you're hearing right now?”

 

“As a matter of fact, it is. You should be able to hear it, too, if you listen. It's the sound of your hearts beating. They used to beat the same way after we'd...well. In any event, they apparently still beat that way afterwards.” The Master gazes pensively at a spot somewhere beyond the Doctor's shoulder. “I used to think, when we were together, that I was the only one in all of creation who could make your hearts beat with that particular rhythm.” The Master's eyes refocus on the Doctor and he gives him an ironic smile. “The foolish things we tell ourselves when we're young and in...” His voice trails off. He lays his head back down on the Doctor's chest.

 

The Doctor is sick of crying. He's so sick of it that he's prayed to gods he doesn't believe in to please let him not cry ever again. But his prayers were just words, it seems, because he feels tears roll from the corners of his eyes sideways across his temples and into his hair.

 

He swallows before he speaks. “Yeah,' he says by way of agreement, then gathers this Master to him with both arms and holds on to him tightly for a little while before he leaves.


End file.
